cjcz92 has found a unicorn, and posted it at the Cohort. It’s a 1984-1987 Mercury Lynx, a rebadged Escort, of course, and with the rare diesel option. When was the last time you saw or heard one?

Here’s the proof.

And here’s the section from the 1984 brochure on it. It’s a Mazda engine, 2.0L and rated at 52 hp. “this new engine should offer impressive performance”. Undoubtedly. By the time it came out in 1984, fuel prices had moderated, so this is something of a Johnny-come-lately.

It came with a five speed stick. No three-speed automatic, thank you!

Not a whole lot of thought went into the graphic design relationship of these two badges. But then that kind of applies to these cars in general.

Without license plates in what looks ot be some sort of storage lot, I’m not sure this car has much of a future, but it does now on the pages of CC, where it’s now been immortalized. So well deserved too.

60 Comments

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a Lynx diesel but I did know someone who had the Ford version. My friend’s father worked in the local Ford field office and got one for his daughter to drive for a year or so.

This is why I love this site! I had no idea Ford had a diesel option for these. Mine was a 1982 Escort, so it was not offered when I got mine new.
You can badmouth these for many reasons, but I got almost 100K miles out of mine, and it is remembered fondly for all the stupid things I did in it as a young man.

I have fond memories of my ’84 Escort, she was a pretty damn good car. Almost made it to 100K miles before the typical head failure, had it replaced and drove it to about 190K miles before selling it for $100.00, still running great. And trust me, I didn’t baby that car! I worked in remodeling back then and my Escort was a rolling toolbox, and more than a few times I’d fill the cargo space with bags of gravel mix, bundles of shingles, and multiple 5 gallon buckets of paint and drywall mud! She took all the abuse like a trooper!

I had a 1982 Escort for my first car. Specifically, the interesting combination of a wagon with the 1.6L HO (yep, there was a high output version of that engine) and a close ratio 4-speed. It was surprisingly quick in its day. Mine made it about 150K miles.

3 second start performance? That’s overly optimistic, isn’t it? I’ve lived with diesels around all my life, as they were really common around here, and even new cars in the ’80s needed much more than 3 seconds (unless they were still warm, in which case they’d start outright). If I remember correctly, even pre common rail Mercedes would need some glowplug time before starting.

If the PR folk included start performance in the copy (something you never see in other press releases), that tells me someone at Ford did a survey of potential buyers, and discovered diesel start times were keeping folks from pulling the trigger on these new-fangled diesels.

As far as it being overly optimistic, I’m also sure their engineering group researched the topic and certified that 3 second value. However, you know they followed a very careful maintenance schedule during the research, and closely monitored the battery reserve capacity for maximum glow plug performance.

I’d also like to see the environmental conditions established for the test- They may have used “real world” data from the Phoenix area….

Wow, if I ever knew about these I had forgotten all about them. I remember “Diesel Fever” in the American auto industry, and Ford showed up late. Between this and the diesel Continental Mark VIII, they sold, what, 30 of them?

Diesel Fever was well and truly over by 1984, partly due to the awful reputation GM gave diesels and partly due to moderating fuel prices that did not make the price premium for the diesel seem like a good bet. I also suspect that word was also out by then that going diesel called for more changes to one’s driving lifestyle than many Americans wanted to sign up for, what with searching for stations, fuel gelling and no-starts in cold weather, not to mention the crummy performance.

Had Ford been out with this in 1981 there would have been waiting lists for these.

I’ve seen at least 2 of these over the years, well, the Ford version. And I even saw a Tempo on a small Texas Ford dealers lot in the early 80s with this diesel engine along with nearly every other optional extra.

BTW, there are 3 different badges on the back of this car, and NONE of them use the same type of lettering.

Back in the early 90s I drove my little brother’s 84 Escort once. His had the regular/gas engine and manual transmission, with a clutch that slipped badly. I had no fun driving that car but suspect it was probably a pretty decent little car before my brother nearly killed it. My brother and 2 of my 4 sisters would own 6-7 Escorts/Lynxes in the 80s.

It has been a a while since I have seen a Lynx of this generation. Not sure if I have ever seen a diesel variant as they were not very common here. The last few Escorts of this age I have been spotted in the scrapyard.

The Chevette diesel seemed to be well-known, perhaps because it got alot of ink in car magazines (“Chevette Diesel, because the gas version wasn’t already slow enough”). But like many others here, I either didn’t remember or never knew there was ever an Escort/Lynx diesel.

The usual placement of the badges was “Mercury” on the left side of the hatch and “Lynx” on the right. I think the “5-Speed” would have been under “Lynx” on the right too. Was this the last car to have a callout about the transmission choice? Seems so quaint now, even in an era where some cars could brag of a “10 Speed Automatic” or “7 Speed Dual Clutch”….

My pet theory of the Escort/Lynx “5-Speed” callout was that it was a dealer-inventory tool more than anything else. Automatics didn’t get one because in that era of low cars with see-through rear windows it was easy enough to walk the back of a row of cars, peer between the front seats and see a manual stick or an automatic T-bar; the “5-Speed” callout confirmed a car with that option without having to move to the side and check the sticker, lack of one in conjunction with the stick indicated the standard 4-speed manual.

I test drove a couple of these back in the day, and we settled on a sweet and underpowered Rabbit Diesel that we put 230k on trouble free.
The Escort/Lynx diesel was either Mazda or Isuzu, and a great engine! It had 2 oil filters to extend the oil change miles; it had a water separator; and was capable of 50 mpg’s easily in the days of 55 mph speed limits! (And it had more torque than the little VW 1.6 diesel)

This reminded me that the Ford Ranger pickup also had a diesel option in the 80s using a different Mazda diesel. Both are seriously rare. The only small diesels from the era I remember seeing are VWs, an Isuzu P’up and a South American market Toyota Carina (looked like a 1st gen Camry) around 85-86. The Toyota had diplomatic plates which was common in the NYC area between UN missions and consulates. My neighborhood had several Mercedes W123s in that odd butterscotch pudding color that belonged to Germans.

Everything Japanese and European could be had in diesel within reason, and a three second glow sounds about right, you simply adjust your driving habits ignition on glow put on seatbelt start, been doing it for years in a diesel Citroen with an 80s designed engine and a diesel Toyota Corona before that, water seperator this is all standard stuff every manufacturer fitted their diesel engines with. Probably as good of a car as the gas version with half `th`e running costs.

One small thing I generally liked about cars from that era, is their branding and badges were more discreet. Taking into account the larger scale of modern cars, the Cougar in profile badge on the grille might likely be significantly larger if applied today.

That was a Reagan era, anti-regulation move to drop 5mph bumpers. What else was dropped? The requirement to label speedometers in KPH (in small print), because the U.S. had been on a path to the metric system, and the new attitude was “America doesn’t change to suit the world!”

Buddy who was a car killer first class had an Escort diesel.
He said it was the only car he ever owned that he actually got rid of by choice. It was still running, he just got tired of looking at it every day.

How many of these could be left in the world, at all? And how much would a replacement taillamp lens and/or assembly cost or fetch online? I hate to think of this car’s inevitable fate… or of driving it on an upward-sloping expressway entrance ramp.

Wow! Eric, seeing this also reminded me of how similar the taillamp lenses of the original Lynxes were similar to those of the c. ’84 Escort GT. I think that listing is mislabeled – that lens is missing the horizontal ribs the Lynx’s had. But I could be wrong – I am hardly the expert on these cars! LOL

Designed as a diesel from start to finish […] An innovative quick glow plug system provides 3-second start performance, regardless of outside temperature. A fine filtration water separator with warning light alerts the driver to the presence of fuel contaminants

This reads like an item-by-item response to a list of customer-facing things GM fuсked up on the dieselised Olds 350.

*RS Turbo equipped with 2½-mph bumpers

This little footnote represents a fair amount of substance. I can’t see the block of main text that bore the referring asterisk, but I imagine it promotes the car’s 5-mph bumpers, which were made into a promotable benefit by the Reagan Administration’s weakening of the bumper regs as well described here; take a look at those repair cost differences.

Daniel,
Regarding the bumper standards: Many years ago my sister crashed her ’92 Mustang and it was impounded. She gave it to me for the cost of getting it out of impound. That yard towed that car and an ’87 junker to my house for cheap, and let me take whatever I wanted off the donor car. I was surprised by the difference in the bumper design. The ’87 had energy-absorbing struts and a steel frame. The ’92 was only a block of foam. Everything else was the same and I drove that little Mustang for years.

I don’t remember these, and had no idea that Tempo/Topaz could get that 2.0 diesel, either. But I do remember the late-70s and early-80s flurry of diesels coming to market, for better/worse. I know EPA mileage computation has changed, but still some impressive numbers back there 35 years ago. (Yes, I realize cars were lighter, and had fewer gadgets, etc.)

It hope the “Mercury” on the trunklid was owner-added. It looks dumb, like when owners of ’78-’82 F-series trucks glued the Blue Oval in the center of the eggcrate grilles, with the FORD letters still on the front of the hood. Blecch!

Strange placement, every lynx I can find pictures of online has the Mercury badge where the 5-speed badge is on this one. It makes me wonder if the emblems got shuffled after a collision repair. The 5-speed badge is especially curious, no other Fords or Mercury’s from this era advertised this.

“Designed as a diesel from start to finish” must be Ford’s dig at the Oldsmobile LF9 350 cu in diesel V8. The LF9 was also designed as a diesel, but somehow rumor quickly became legend as it was cemented in Americans’ minds as a converted gasoline engine.

I had an 83 Mercury Lynx as my 3rd car back when I was 16 in 1992. Good car, cheap on gas. I gave $300 for it. Nice body, nice indterior. The car was grey and I painted the raised portion of the hood and the lower half of the body black and I added grey pinstrioing. It hydroplaned easily. A transmission problem developed where the car would pop out of gear. It started with 4th, then worked its way down to all gears. I had to hold the shift lever in gear or it would pop out. Probably due to love of squealing tires back then. Traded it for a Snapper riding mower.

My middle sister had a ’85 Escort as her first car, sometime in 1987. Hers was automatic, she can’t drive standard, with the gas engine. I remember it as a pretty good car, she used to have to drive it pretty long distance to her first job which was in another town. Only problem I think she had with it was an ignition module and also she had to have an auxiliary fuel pump added, for some reason they didn’t replace the stock pump.

One of my friends bought an Escort when they first came out, would have been in 1981, to replace a rusting Audi Fox…the floor was so bad that the driver’s seat “reclined” down into the floor. His was a stripper, 5 speed, and I think he bought it new because the interest rates on used cars was extremely high (I think 21%) so it was an incentive to buy a new car

Those were also available as a wagon. A friend had one sedan and a wagon, both went a few bazillion miles before being sold off. I am pretty sure that they are still local though. This might bear looking into.